It was a lovely morning when Richard, his heart beating with a hope whose intensity of bliss he had never imagined, stopped at the station nearest to Mortgrange, and set out to walk there in the afternoon sun. June folded him in her loveliness of warmth and colour. The grass was washed with transparent gold: he saw both the gold and the green together, but unmingled. Often had he walked the same road, a contented tradesman; a gentleman now, with a baronet to his father, he loved, and knew he must always love the tradesman-uncle more than the baronet-father. He was much more than grateful to his father for his ready reception of him, and his care of his education; but he could not be proud of him as of his mother and his aunt and uncle and his grandfather. He held it one of God's greatest gifts to come of decent people; and if in his case the decency was on one side only, it was the more his part to stop the current of transmitted evil, and in his own person do what he might to annihilate it!
His only anxiety was lest his father should again lay upon him the command to cease communication with his brother and sister. He lifted up his heart to God, and vowed that not for anything the earth could give would he obey. The socialism he had learned from his uncle had undergone a baptism to something infinitely higher. He prayed God to keep him clean of heart, and able to hold by his duty. He promised God—it was a way he had when he would bind himself to do right—that he would not forsake his own, would not break the ties of blood for any law, custom, prejudice, or pride of man. The vow made his heart strong and light. But he felt there was little merit in the act, seeing he could live without his father's favour. He saw how much harder it would be for a poor tradeless man like Arthur Lestrange to make such a resolve. In the face of such a threat from his father what could he do?—where find courage to resist? Resist he must, or be a slave, but hard indeed it would be! Every father, thought Richard, who loved his children, ought to make them independent of himself, that neither clog, nor net, nor hindrance of any kind might hamper the true working of their consciences: then would the service they rendered their parents be precious indeed! then indeed would love be lord, and neither self, nor the fear of man, nor the fear of fate be a law in their life!
He had not sent word to his grandfather that he was coming, and had told his father that he would walk from the station—which suited sir Wilton, for he felt nervous, and was anxious there should be no stir. So Richard came to Mortgrange as quietly as a star to its place.
When he reached the gate and walked in as of old, he was challenged by the woman who kept it: of all the servants she and lady Ann's maid had alone treated him with rudeness, and now she was not polite although she did not know him. Neither was he recognized by the man who opened the door.
Sir Wilton sat in the library expecting him. A gentleman was with him, but he kept in the background, seemingly absorbed in the titles of a row of books.
“There you are, you rascal!” his father was on the point of saying as Richard came into the light of the one big bow-window, but, instead, he gazed at him for an instant in silence. Before him was one of the handsomest fellows his eyes had ever rested upon—broad-shouldered and tall and straight, with a thoughtful yet keen face, of which every feature was both fine and solid, and dark brown hair with night and firelight in it, and a touch of the sun here and there at moments. The situation might have been embarrassing to a more experienced man than Richard as he waited for his father to speak; but he stood quite at his ease, slightly bent, and motionless, neither hands nor feet giving him any of the trouble so often caused by those outlying provinces. The slight colour that rose in his rather thin cheeks, only softened the beauty of a face whose outline was severe. He stood like a soldier waiting the word of his officer.
“By Jove!” said his father; and there was another pause.
The baronet was momently growing prouder of his son. He had never had a feeling like it before. He saw his mother in him.
“She's looking at me straight out of his eyes!” he said to himself.
“Ain't you going to sit down?” he said to him at last, forgetting that he had neither shaken hands with him, nor spoken a word of welcome.
Richard moved a chair a little nearer and sat down, wondering what would come next.
“Well, what are you going to do?” asked his father.
“I must first know your wish, sir,” he answered.
“Church won't do?”
“No, sir.”
“Glad to hear it! You're much too good for the church!—No offence, Mr. Wingfold! The same applies to yourself.”
“So my uncle on the stock-exchange used to say!” answered Wingfold, laughing, as he turned to the baronet. “He thought me good enough, I suppose, for a priest of Mammon!”
“I'm glad you're not offended. What do you think of that son of mine?”
“I have long thought well of him.”
At the first sound of his voice, Richard had risen, and now approached him, his hand outstretched.
“Mr. Wingfold!” he said joyfully.
“I remember now!” returned sir Wilton; “it was from him I heard of you; and that was what made me seek your acquaintance.—He promises fairly, don't you think?—Shoulders good; head well set on!”
“He looks a powerful man!” said Wingfold. “—We shall be happy to see you, Mr. Lestrange, as soon as you care to come to us.”
“That will be to-morrow, I hope, sir,” answered Richard.
“Stop, stop!” cried sir Wilton. “We know nothing for certain yet!—By the bye, if your stepmother don't make you particularly welcome, you needn't be surprised, my boy!”
“Certainly not. I could hardly expect her to be pleased, sir!”
“Not pleased? Not pleased at what? Now, now, don't you presume! Don't you take things for granted! How do you know she will have reason to be displeased? I never promised you anything! I never told you what I intended!—Did I ever now?”
“No, sir. You have already done far more than ever you promised. You have given me all any man has a right to from his father. I am ready to go to London at once, and make my own living.”
“How?”
“I don't know yet; I should have to choose—thanks to you and my uncle!”
“In the meantime, you must be introduced to your stepmother.”
“Then—excuse me, sir Wilton—” interposed the parson, “do you wish me to regard my old friend Richard as your son and heir?”
“As my son, yes; as my heir—that will depend—”
“On his behaviour, I presume!” Wingfold ventured.
“I say nothing of the sort!” replied the baronet testily. “Would you have me doubt whether he will carry himself like a gentleman? The thing depends on my pleasure. There are others besides him.”
He rose to ring the bell. Richard started up to forestall his intent.
“Now, Richard,” said his father, turning sharp upon him, “don't be officious. Nothing shows want of breeding more than to do a thing for a man in his own house. It is a cursed liberty!”
“I will try to remember, sir,” answered Richard.
“Do; we shall get on the better.”
He was seized, as by the claw of a crab, with a sharp twinge of the gout. He caught at the back of a chair, hobbled with its help to the table, and so to his seat. Richard restrained himself and stood rigid. The baronet turned a half humorous, half reproachful look on him.
“That's right!” he said. “Never be officious. I wish my father had taught me as I am teaching you!—Ever had the gout, Mr. Wingfold?”
“Never, sir Wilton.”
“Then you ought every Sunday to say, 'Thank God that I have no gout!'”
“But if we thanked God for all the ills we don't have, there would be no time to thank him for any of the blessings we do have!”
“What blessings?”
“So many, I don't know where to begin to answer you.”
“Ah, yes! you're a clergyman! I forgot. It's your business to thank God. For my part, being a layman, I don't know anything in particular I've got to thank him for.”
“If I thought a layman had less to thank God for than a clergyman, I should begin to doubt whether either had anything to thank him for. Why, sir Wilton, I find everything a blessing! I thank God I am a poor man. I thank him for every good book I fall in with. I thank him when a child smiles to me. I thank him when the sun rises or the wind blows on me. Every day I am so happy, or at least so peaceful, or at the worst so hopeful, that my very consciousness is a thanksgiving.”
“Do you thank him for your wife, Mr. Wingfold?”
“Every day of my existence.”
The baronet stared at him a moment, then turned to his son.
“Richard,” he said, “you had better make up your mind to go into the church! You hear Mr. Wingfold! I shouldn't like it myself; I should have to be at my prayers all day!”
“Ah, sir Wilton, it doesn't take time to thank God! It only takes eternity.”
Sir Wilton stared. He did not understand.
“Ring the bell, will you!” he said. “The fellow seems to have gone to sleep.”
Richard obeyed, and not a word was spoken until the man appeared.
“Wilkins,” said his master, “go to my lady, and say I beg the favour of her presence in the library for a moment.”
The man went.
“No antipathy to cats, I hope!” he added, turning to Richard.
“None, sir,” answered Richard gravely.
“That's good! Then you won't lie taken aback!”
In a few minutes—she seldom made her husband wait—lady Ann sailed into the room, the servant closing the door so deftly behind her, that it seemed without moving to have given passage to an angelic presence.
The two younger men rose.
“Mr. Wingfold you know, my lady!” said her husband.
“I have not the pleasure,” answered lady Ann, with a slight motion of the hard bud at the top of her long stalk.
“Ah, I thought you did!—The Reverend Mr. Wingfold, lady Ann!—My wife, Mr. Wingfold!—The other gentleman, lady Ann.—”
He paused. Lady Ann turned her eyes slowly on Richard. Wingfold saw a slight, just perceptible start, and a settling of the jaws.
“The other gentleman,” resumed the baronet, “you do not know, but you will soon be the best of friends.”
“I beg your pardon, sir Wilton, I do know him!—I hope,” she went on, turning to Richard, “you will keep steadily to your work. The sooner the books are finished, the better!”
Richard smiled, but what he was on the point of saying, his father prevented.
“You mistake, my lady! I thought you did not know him!” said the baronet. “That gentleman is my son, and will one day be sir Richard.”
“Oh!” returned her ladyship—without a shadow of change in her impassivity, except Wingfold was right in fancying the slightest movement of squint in the eye next him. She held out her hand.
“This is an unexpected—”
For once in her life her lips were truer than her heart: they did not saypleasure.
Richard took her hand respectfully, sad for the woman whose winter had no fuel, and who looked as if she would be cold to all eternity. Lady Ann stared him in the eyes and said,—
“My favourite prayer-book has come to pieces at last: perhaps you would bind it for me?”
“I shall be delighted,” answered Richard.
“Thank you,” she said, bowed to Wingfold, and left the room.
Sir Wilton sat like an offended turkey-cock, staring after her. “By Jove!” he seemed to say to himself.
“There! that's over!” he cried, coming to himself. “Ring the bell, Richard, and let us have lunch.—Richard,nogentleman could have behaved better! I am proud of you!—It's blood that does it!” he murmured to himself.
As if he had himself compounded both his own blood and his boy's in the still-room of creation, he took all the credit of Richard'ssavoir faire, as he counted it. He did not know that the same thing made Wingfold happy and Richard a gentleman! Richard had had a higher breeding than was known to sir Wilton. At the court of courts, whence the manners of some other courts would be swept as dust from the floors, the baronet would hardly gain admittance!
Lady Ann went up the stair slowly and perpendicularly, a dull pain at her heart. The cause was not so much that her son was the second son, as that the son of the blacksmith's daughter was—she took care to sayat first sight—a finergentlemanthan her Arthur. Rank and position, she vaguely reflected, must not look for justice from the jealous heavens! They always sided with the poor! Just see the party-spirit of the Psalms! The rich and noble were hardly dealt with! Nowadays even the church was with the radicals!
The baronet was merry over his luncheon. The servants wondered at first, but before the soup was removed, they wondered no more: the young man at the table, in whom not one of them had recognized the bookbinder, was the lost heir to Mortgrange! He was worth finding, they agreed—one who would hold his own! The house would be merrier now—thank heaven! They liked Mr. Arthur well enough, but here was his master!
The meal was over, and the baronet always slept after lunch.
“You'll stay to dinner, won't you, Mr. Wingfold?” he said, rising. “—Richard, ring the bell. Better send for Mrs. Locke at once, and arrange with her where you will sleep.”
“Then I may choose my own room, sir?” rejoined Richard.
“Of course—but better not too near my lady's,” answered his father with a grim smile as he hobbled from the room.
When the housekeeper came—
“Mrs. Locke,” said Richard, “I want to see the room that used to be the nursery—in the older time, I mean.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Mrs. Locke pleasantly, and led them up two flights of stairs and along corridor and passage to the room Richard had before occupied. He glanced round it, and said,
“This shall be my room. Will you kindly get it ready for me.”
She hesitated. It had certainly not been repapered, as sir Wilton thought, and had said to Mrs. Tuke! To Mrs. Locke it seemed uninhabitable by a gentleman.
“I will send for the painter and paper-hanger at once,” she replied, “but it will take more than a week to get ready.”
“Pray leave it as it is,” he answered. “—You can have the floor swept of course,” he added with a smile, seeing her look of dismay. “I will sleep here to-night, and we can settle afterward what is to be done to it.—There used to be a portrait,” he went on, “—over the chimney-piece, the portrait of a lady—not well painted, I fancy, but I liked it: what has become of it?”
Then first it began to dawn on Mrs. Locke that the young man who mended the books and the heir to Mortgrange were the same person.
“It fell down one day, and has not been put up agin,” she answered.
“Do you know where it is?”
“I will find it, sir.”
“Do, if you please. Whose portrait is it?”
“The last lady Lestrange's, sir.—But bless my stupid old head! it's his own mother's picture he's asking for! You'll pardon me, sir! The thing's more bewildering than you'd think!—I'll go and get it at once.”
“Thank you. Mr. Wingfold and I will wait till you bring it.”
“There ain't anywhere for you to sit, sir!” lamented the old lady. “If I'd only known! I'm sure, sir, I wish you joy!”
“Thank you, Mrs. Locke. We'll sit here on the mattress.”
Richard had not forgotten how the eyes of the picture used to draw his, and he had often since wondered whether it could be the portrait of his mother.
In a few minutes Mrs. Locke reappeared, carrying the portrait, which had never been put in a frame, and knotting the cord, Richard hung it again on the old nail. It showed a well-formed face, but was very flat and wooden. The eyes, however, were comparatively well painted; and it seemed to Richard that he could read both sorrow and disappointment in them, with a yearning after something she could not have.
They went out for a ramble in the park, and there Richard told his friend as much as he knew of his story, describing as well as he understood them the changes that had passed upon him in the matter of religion, and making no secret of what he owed to the expostulations and spiritual resistances of Barbara. Wingfold, after listening with profound attention, told him he had passed through an experience in many points like, and at the root the same as his own; adding that, long before he was sure of anything, it had become more than possible for him to keep going on; and that still he was but looking and hoping and waiting for a fuller dawn of what had made his being already blessed.
They consulted whether Wingfold should act on the baronet's careless invitation, and concluded it better he should not stay to dinner. Then, as there was yet time, and it was partly on Wingfold's way, they set out for the smithy.
When the first delight of their meeting was abated, Simon sent to let Arthur Manson know that his brother was there. For Arthur had all this time been with Simon, to whom Richard, saving enough from his allowance, had prevented him from being a burden.
He looked much better, and was enchanted to see his brother again, and learn the good news of his recognition by his father. “I'm so glad it's you and not me, Richard!” he said. “It makes me feel quite safe and happy. We shall have nothing now but fair play all round, the rest of our lives! How happy Alice will be!”
“Is Alice still in the old place? I haven't heard of her for some time,” said Richard.
“Don't you know?” exclaimed Arthur. “She's been at the parsonage for months and months! Mrs. Wingfold went and fetched her away, to work for her, and be near me. She's as happy now as the day is long. She says if everybody was as good as her master and mistress, there would be no misery left in the world.”
“I don't doubt it,” answered Richard. “—But I've just parted with Mr. Wingfold, and he didn't say a word about her!”
“When anything has to be done, Mr. Wingfold never forgets it,” said Arthur; “but I should just like to hear all the things Mr. Wingfold did and forgot in a month!”
“Arthur's getting on.” thought Richard.
But he had to learn how much Wingfold had done for him. First of all he had set himself, by talking to him and lending him books, to find out his bent, or at least something he was capable of. But for months he could not wake him enough to know anything of what was in him: the poor fellow was weary almost to death. At last, however, he got him to observe a little. Then he began to set him certain tasks; and as he was an invalid, the first was what he called “The task of twelve o'clock;”—which was, for a quarter of an hour from every noon during a month, to write down what he then saw going on in the world.
The first day he had nothing to show: he had seen nothing!
“What were the clouds doing?” Mr. Wingfold asked. “What were the horses in the fields doing?—What were the birds you saw doing?—What were the ducks and hens doing?—Put down whatever you see any creature about.”
The next evening, he went to him again, and asked him for his paper. Arthur handed him a folded sheet.
“Now,” said Mr. Wingfold, “I am not going to look at this for the present. I am going to lay it in one of my drawers, and you must write another for me to-morrow. If you are able, bring it over to me; if not, lay it by, and do not look at it, but write another, and another—one every day, and give them all to me the next time I come, which will be soon. We shall go on that way for a month, and then we shall see something!”
At the end of the month, Mr. Wingfold took all the papers, and fastened them together in their proper order. Then they read them together, and did indeed see something! The growth of Arthur's observation both in extent and quality, also the growth of his faculty for narrating what he saw, were remarkable both to himself and his instructor. The number of things and circumstances he was able to see by the end of the month, compared with the number he had seen in the beginning of it, was wonderful; while the mode of his record had changed from that of a child to that almost of a man.
Mr. Wingfold next, as by that time the weather was quite warm, set him “The task of six o'clock in the evening,” when the things that presented themselves to his notice would be very different. After a fortnight, he changed again the hour of his observation, and went on changing it. So that at length the youth who had, twice every day, walked along Cheapside almost without seeing that one face differed from another, knew most of the birds and many of the insects, and could in general tell what they were about, while the domestic animals were his familiar friends. He delighted in the grass and the wild flowers, the sky and the clouds and the stars, and knew, after a real, vital fashion, the world in which he lived. He entered into the life that was going on about him, and so in the house of God became one of the family. He had ten times his former consciousness; his life was ten times the size it was before. As was natural, his health had improved marvellously. There is nothing like interest in life to quicken the vital forces—the secret of which is, that they are left freer to work.
Richard was rejoiced with the change in him, and reckoned of what he might learn from Arthur in the long days before them; while he in turn would tell him many things he would now be prepared to hear. The soul that had seemed rapidly sinking into the joyless dark, was now burning clear as a torch of heaven.
As the dinner-hour drew nigh, Richard went to the drawing-room, scrupulously dressed. Lady Ann gave him the coldest of polite recognitions; Theodora was full of a gladness hard to keep within the bounds which fear of her mother counselled; Victoria was scornful, and as impudent as she dared be in the presence of her father; Miss Malliver was utterly wooden, and behaved as if she had never seen him before; Arthur was polite and superior. Things went pretty well, however. Percy, happily, was at Woolwich, pretending to study engineering: of him Richard had learned too much at Oxford.
Theodora and Richard were at once drawn to each other—he prejudiced in her favour by Barbara, she proud of her new, handsome brother. She was a plain, good-natured, good-tempered girl—with red hair, which only her father and mother disliked, and a modest, freckled face, whose smile was genuine and faith-inspiring. Her mother counted her stupid, accepting the judgment of the varnished governess, who saw wonder or beauty or value in nothing her eyes or hands could not reach. Theodora was indeed one of those who, for lack of true teaching, or from the deliberateness of nature, continue children longer than most, but she was not therefore stupid. The aloe takes seven years to blossom, but when it does, its flower may be thirty feet long. Where there is love, there is intellect: at what period it may show itself, matters little. Richard felt he had in her another sister—one for whom he might do something. He talked freely, as became him at his father's table, and the conversation did not quite flag. If lady Ann said next to nothing, she said nearly as much as usual, and was perfectly civil; Arthur was sullen but not rude; Theodora's joy made her talk as she had never talked before. A morn of romance had dawned upon her commonplace life. Vixen gave herself to her dinner, and but the shadow of a grimace now and then reminded Richard of the old monkey-phiz.
Having the heart of a poet, the brain of a scientist, and the hands of a workman—hands, that is, made for making, Richard talked so vitally that in most families not one but all would have been interested; and indeed Arthur too would have enjoyed listening, but that he was otherwise occupied. That he had to look unconcerned at his own deposition, while regarding as an intruder the man whose place he had so long in a sense usurped, was not his sorest trial: regarding as a prig the man who talked about things worth talking about, he could not help feeling himself a poor creature, an empty sack, beside the son of the low-born woman. But indeed Richard, brought face to face with life, and taught to meet necessity with labour, had had immeasurable advantages over Arthur.
The younger insisted to himself that his brother could not have the feelings of a gentleman; that he must have poverty-stricken ways of looking at things. He could, it was true, find nothing in his manners, carriage, or speech, unlike a gentleman, but the vulgarity must be there, and he watched to find it. For he was not himself a gentleman yet.
When they went to the drawing-room, and Richard had sung a ballad so as almost to make lady Ann drop a scale or two from her fish-eyes, Arthur went out of the room stung with envy, and not ashamed of it. The thing most alien to the true idea of humanity, is the notion that our well-being lies in surpassing our fellows. We have to rise above ourselves, not above our neighbours; to take all the goodofthem, notfromthem, and give them all our good in return. That which cannot be freely shared, can never be possessed. Arthur went to his room with a gnawing at his heart. Not merely must he knock under to the foundling, but confess that the foundling could do most things better than he—was out of sight his superior in accomplishment as well as education.—“But let us see how he rides and shoots!” he thought.
Even Vixen, who had been saying to herself all the time of dinner, “Mean fellow! to come like a fox and steal poor Arthur's property!”—even she was cowed a little by his singing, and felt for the moment in the presence of her superior.
Sir Wilton was delighted. Here was a son to represent him!—the son of the woman the county had declined to acknowledge! What was lady Ann's plebeian litter beside this high-bred, modest, self-possessed fellow! He was worthy of his father, by Jove!
He went early to bed, and Richard was not sorry. He too retired early, leaving the rest to talk him over.
How they did it, I do not care to put on record. Theodora said little, for her heart had come awake with a new and lovely sense of gladness and hope.
“If he would but fall in love with Barbara Wylder!” she thought; “—or rather if Barbara would but fall in love with him, for nobody can help falling in love with her, how happy I should be! they are the two I love best in the world!—next to papa and mamma, of course!” she added, being a loyal girl.
The next morning, Richard came upon Arthur shooting at a mark, and both with pistols and rifle beat him thoroughly. But when Arthur began to talk about shooting pheasants, he found in Richard a rooted dislike to killing. This moved Arthur's contempt.
“Keep it dark,” he said; “you'll be laughed at if you don't. My father won't like it.”
“Why must a man enjoy himself at the expense of joy?” answered Richard. “I pass no judgment upon your sport. I merely say I don't choose to kill birds. What men may think of me for it, is a matter of indifference to me. I think of them much as they think of a Frenchman or an Italian, who shoots larks and blackbirds and thrushes and nightingales: I don't see the great difference!”
They strolled into the stable. There stood Miss Brown, looking over the door of her box. She received Richard with glad recognition.
“How comes Miss Brown here?” he asked. “Where can her mistress be?”
“The mare's at home,” answered Arthur. “I bought her.”
“Oh!” said Richard, and going into the box, lifted her foot and looked at the shoe. Alas, Miss Brown had worn out many shoes since Barbara drove a nail in her hoof! Had there been one of hers there, he would have known it—by a pretty peculiarity in the turn of the point back into the hoof which she called her mark. The mare sniffed about his head in friendly fashion.
“She smells the smithy!” said Arthur to himself.—“Yes; your grandfather's work.” he remarked. “I should be sorry to see any other man shoe horse of mine!”
“So should I!” answered Richard. “—I wonder why Miss Wylder sold Miss Brown!” he said, after a pause.
“I am not so curious!” rejoined Arthur. “She sold her, and I bought her.”
Neither divined that the animal stood there a sacrifice to Barbara's love of Richard.
Arthur had given up hope of winning Barbara, but the thought that the bookbinder-fellow might now, as he vulgarly phrased it to himself, go in and win, swelled his heart with a yet fiercer jealousy. “I hate him,” he said in his heart. Yet Arthur was not a bad fellow as fellows go. He was only a man for himself, believing every man must be for himself, and count the man in his way his enemy. He was just a man who had not begun to stop being a devil.
At breakfast lady Ann was almost attentive to her stepson. As it happened they were left alone at the table. Suddenly she addressed him.
“Richard, I have one request to make of you,” she said; “I hope you will grant it me!”
“I will if I can,” he answered; “but I must not promise without knowing what it is.”
“You do not feel bound to please me, I know! I have the misfortune not to be your mother!”
“I feel bound to please you where I can, and shall be more than glad to do so.”
“It is a small thing I am going to ask. I should not have thought of mentioning it, but for the terms you seem upon with Mr. Wingfold.”
“I hope to see him within an hour or so.”
“I thought as much!—Do you happen to remember a small person who came a good deal about the house when you were at work here?”
“If your ladyship means Miss Wylder, I remember her perfectly.”
“It is necessary to let you know, and then I shall leave the matter to your good sense, that Mrs. Wylder, and indeed the girl herself at various times, has behaved to me with such rudeness, that you cannot in ordinary decency have acquaintance with them. I mention it in case Mr. Wingfold should want to take you to see them. They are parishioners of his.”
“I am sorry I must disappoint you,” said Richard. Lady Ann rose with a grey glitter in her eyes.
“Am I to understand youintendcalling on the Wylders?” she said.
“I have imperative reasons for calling upon them this very morning,” answered Richard.
“I am sorry you should so immediately show your antagonism!” said lady Ann.
“My obligations to Miss Wylder are such that I must see her the first possible moment.”
“Have you asked your father's permission?”
“I have not,” answered Richard, and left the room hurriedly.
The next moment he was out of the house: lady Ann might go to his father, and he would gladly avoid the necessity of disobeying him the first morning after his return! He did not know how small was her influence with her husband.
He took the path across the fields, and ran until he was out of sight of Mortgrange.
When he came to the parsonage, which he had to pass on his way to the Hall, he saw Mr. Wingfold through the open window of the drawing-room, and turned to the door. The parson met him on the threshold.
“Welcome!” he said. “How did you get through your dinner?”
“Better than I expected,” replied Richard. “But this morning my stepmother began feeling my mouth: she would have me promise not to call on the Wylders. They had been rude to her, she said.”
“Come into the drawing-room. A friend of mine is there who will be glad to see you.”
The drawing-room of the parsonage was low and dark, with its two windows close together on the same side. At the farther end stood a lady, seemingly occupied with an engraving on the wall. She did not move when they entered. Wingfold led Richard up to her, then turned without a word, and left the room. Before either knew, they were each in the other's arms.
Barbara was sobbing. Richard thought he had dared too much and had frightened her.
“I couldn't help it!” Barbara said pleadingly.
“My life has been a longing for you!” said Richard.
“I have wanted you every day!” said Barbara, and began again to sob, but recovered herself with an effort.
“This will never do!” she cried, laughing through her tears. “I shall go crazy with having you! And I've not seen you yet! Let me go, please. I want to look at you!”
Richard released her. She lifted a blushing, tearful face to his. But there was only joy, no pain in her tears; only delight, no shame in her blushes. One glance at the simple, manly face before her, so full of the trust that induces trust, would have satisfied any true woman that she was as safe in his thoughts as in those of her mother. She gazed at him one long silent moment.
“How splendid you are!” she cried, like a wild schoolgirl. “How good of you to grow like that! I wish I could see you on Miss Brown!—What are you going to do, Richard?”
While she spoke, Richard was pasturing his eyes, the two mouths of his soul, on the heavenly meadow of her face; and she for very necessity went on talking, that she might not cry again.
“Are you going back to the bookbinding?” she said.
“I do not know. Sir Wilton—my father hasn't told me yet what he wants me to do.—Wasn't it good of him to send me to Oxford?”
“You've been at Oxford then all this time?—I suppose he will make an officer of you now!—Not that I care! I am content with whatever contents you!”
“I dare say he will hardly like me to live by my hands!” answered Richard, laughing. “He would count it a degradation! There I shall never be able to think like a gentleman!”
Barbara looked perplexed.
“You don't mean to say he's going to treat you just like one of the rest” she exclaimed.
“I really do not know,” answered Richard; “but I think he would hardly enjoy the thought ofSir Richard Lestrangeover a bookbinder's shop in Hammersmith or Brentford!”
“Sir Richard! You do not mean—?”
Her face grew white; her eyes fell; her hand trembled on Richard's arm.
“What is troubling you, dearest?” he asked, in his turn perplexed.
“I can't understand it.” she answered.
“Is it possible you do not know, Barbara?” he returned. “I thought Mr. Wingfold must have told you!—Sir Wilton says I am his son that was lost. Indeed there is no doubt of it.”
“Richard! Richard! believe me I didn't know. Lady Ann told me you were not—”
“How then should I have dared put my arms round you, Barbara?”
“Richard, I care nothing for what the world thinks! I care only for what God thinks.”
“Then, Barbara, you would have married me, believing me base born?”
“Oh Richard! you thought it was knowing who you were that made me—! Richard! Richard! I did not think you could have wronged me so! My father sold Miss Brown because I would not marry your brother and be lady Lestrange. If you had not asked me, and I had been sure it was only because of your birth you wouldn't, I should have found some way of letting you know I cared no more for that than God himself does. The god of the world is the devil. He has many names, but he's all the same devil, as Mr. Wingfold says.—I wonder why he never told me!—I'm glad he didn't. If he had, I shouldn't be here now!”
“I am very glad too, Barbara; but it wouldn't have made so much difference: I was only here on my way to you! But suppose it had been as you thought, it was one thing what you would do, and another what I would ask you to do!”
“What I would have done was what you should have believed I would do!”
“You must just pardon me, Barbara: well as I thought I knew you, I did not know you enough!”
“You do now?”
'“I do.”
There came a silence.
“How long have you known this about yourself, Richard?” said Barbara.
“More than four years.”
“And you never told me!”
“My father wished it kept a secret for a time.”
“Did Mr. Wingfold know?”
“Not till yesterday.”
“Why didn't he tell me yesterday, then?”
“I think he wouldn't have told you if he had known all the time.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason that made him leave us together so suddenly—that you might not be hampered by knowing it—that we might understand each other before you knew. I see it all now! It was just like him!”
“Oh, he is a friend!” cried Barbara. “He knows what one is, and so knows what one is thinking!”
A silent embrace followed, and then Barbara said, “You must come and see my mother!”
“Hadn't you better tell her first?” suggested Richard.
“She knows—knows what you didn't know—what I've been thinking all the time,” rejoined Barbara, with a rosy look of confidence into his eyes.
“She can never have been willing you should marry a tradesman—and one, besides, who—!”
“She knew I would—and that I should have money, else she might not have been willing. I don't say she likes the idea, but she is determined I shall have the man I love—if he will have me,” she added shyly.
“Did you tell her you—cared for me?”
He could not say loved yet; he felt an earthy pebble beside a celestial sapphire!
“Of course I did, when papa wanted me to have Arthur!—not till then; there was no occasion! I could not tell what your thoughts were, but my own were enough for that.”
Mrs. Wylder was taken with Richard the moment she saw him; and when she heard his story, she was overjoyed, and would scarcely listen to a word about the uncertainty of his prospects. That her Bab should marry the man she loved, and that the alliance should be what the world counted respectable, was enough for her. When Richard told his father what he had done, saying they had fallen in love with each other while yet ignorant of his parentage, a glow of more than satisfaction warmed sir Wilton's consciousness. It was lovely! Lady Ann was being fooled on all sides!
“Richard has been making good use of his morning!” he said at dinner. “He has already proposed to Miss Wylder and been accepted! Richard is a man of action—a practical fellow!”
Lady Ann did perhaps turn a shade paler, but she smiled. It was not such a blow as it might have been, for she too had given up hope of securing her for Arthur. But it was not pleasant to her that the grandchild of the blacksmith should have Barbara's money. Theodora was puzzled.